


Familiar Company

by TheDoctorIsIcecube



Series: Bi the way [2]
Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Bisexual Sylvain Jose Gautier, Canon Bisexual Character, Fluff, Friendship, M/M, Mutual Pining, No Spoilers, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-10-05 03:41:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20482271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDoctorIsIcecube/pseuds/TheDoctorIsIcecube
Summary: Linhardt has gotten quite used to Sylvain's late night visits. They talk about anything and everything, and they talk in a way that Sylvain feels unable to with anyone else.





	Familiar Company

**Author's Note:**

> This fic comes pretty much off the back of the previous one in the series, and will make a lot more sense if you read that too! :)

Linhardt was starting to get quite used to the late-night knocks on his door. Never before ten, always quite fast knocks, like the person doing them was anxious to get inside without being seen. Knowing Sylvain as well as he was starting to, he was anxious not to be seen. 

He’d never imagined that, out of all of the people he would meet at the Officers Academy, Sylvain would be the person he’d see most of outside of his class. Sylvain was not the kind of person he associated with at all, normally. And yet, in the dead of night, Sylvain was the one he always saw. Since they’d had their first chat a few weeks ago, Sylvain had been coming to him almost every other day, with questions, confessions, or just things he wanted to discuss. He was surprisingly intellectual under all the shallow flirting, and Linhardt rather liked that about him. 

He stood up, opening his bedroom door with a smile. “Back again, hmm? What brings you here tonight?” 

“You sound like you’re running a business, saying it like that,” Sylvain said with a chuckle and an easy smile. Always an easy smile. “Do I need a reason to see my favourite bookworm?”

“Don’t say it so loud,” Linhardt said, returning the smile. “Annette will be offended.”

“Ah, she knows I love her.” A grin, and then Sylvain was wandering into his room, immediately flopping down on his usual place on Linhardt’s bed. “Hey- I brought you some of that tea you like, just to say thanks for...all these conversations.”

“Oh?” he glanced over and Sylvain did in fact have one of his favourite teas. He wondered how he’d found out about that. “That is my favourite. Thank you.” He wasn’t quite sure how they’d have it now, because it wasn’t really possible to boil water at this time of night.

“I’m glad. I had to charm Professor Byleth to find out what tea you liked, which was difficult. They’re like a brick wall sometimes…” Sylvain let out a huff. “I think they may have just told me to get me to go away, which I guess still means I got what I wanted, even if it’s a little insulting. I’m used to that sort of thing, though.” 

“You’d get it a little less often if you acted normally around people,” Linhardt said. Never once in all the time he’d known Sylvain had he seen him act like a decent, regularly social person in anyone else’s presence. It was all an act, but he never showed anyone anything else. Except late at night.

“Hey, I’m nice to people. Everyone likes to be complimented. Even you do, Linhardt. And might I say, your hair is looking lovely today.” 

Linhardt rolled his eyes, and moved to put the box of tea leaves on his desk and sit down next to Sylvain. “People like you when you stop at one compliment. It’s when you offer to help carry a girl’s books, then ask her out on a date before you’ve walked twenty feet, that some people take issue with you.” 

“I don’t-” Sylvain paused, then frowned, then swatted Linhardt on the arm. “Alright, I do that sometimes. Usually when I’m- having a bad time with...boy stuff, I guess.” He was still very bad at saying ‘I like men’, Linhardt couldn’t help but notice. 

“Attractive men aren’t going to stop existing just because you flirt with more women,” he said. “In fact, if women are avoiding you then you’ll see more men than women. I don’t think that’ll help the problem you’re having at all.” Ideally, Sylvain wouldn’t feel bad about it at all, but that didn’t seem to be happening any time soon.

“...Yeah. Trust me, I’m very aware that attractive men aren’t going away.” There was something decidedly loaded about the way Sylvain said that, but Linhardt couldn’t quite put his finger on the nuance in his voice. 

“So why did you come tonight, other than to give me tea?” he asked. Usually, Sylvain had a story to share, or something to rant about. Often it was both at the same time, and usually that had something to do with his family. If there was one thing Linhardt had learned about Sylvain, it was that his family was awful. Particularly his brother, judging by the many, many stories that Sylvain had told him that involved near-death incidents directly caused by his elder sibling. Faerghus was a strange place. 

“I, uh...just wanted to be with you,” Sylvain admitted, looking down at his lap and very pointedly not at Linhardt. “I like these evenings together, they’re nice. I can be myself.” 

“I’m sure you could stand to be yourself a little more,” he said. Maybe he was being a little too insistent or unrealistic with his advice, but clearly no one else was telling Sylvain what he needed to hear. “You have friends, don’t you? Even I have friends.”

“I do, but none of my friends really know about the parts of me that you do. Dimitri, Felix, and Ingrid are all childhood friends, so things are very different with them.” Sylvain was still looking down at his lap, like he was anxious about something. 

“If you were friends when you were children then they know the real you,” he said. He understood that things were difficult for Sylvain (at least, he was trying his hardest to understand. It was hard when their experiences and opinions were so different), but he also needed to stop wallowing. He was missing out on genuine relationships.

“They know most of the real me,” Sylvain corrected. He looked up again, something surprisingly soft in his eyes. “I think you might well know more about me now, which is strange. I don’t think I mind, though. I can trust you.” 

“I’m flattered,” he said, “and I’m not trying to get rid of you. I just think it would be beneficial to you if you were able to talk to them as well. You’d feel less like you were lying all the time, for one thing.” Linhardt was not trained to - nor was he particularly good at - solving other people’s problems. But he wanted to put effort in to help Sylvain, for some reason.

“Yeah, you’re probably right. I know I could trust them, it’s just...scary. The thought that they might see me differently. I mean- how did you tell people, Linhardt? I feel like it’s always just been common knowledge that you don’t just date girls.” 

He hummed. “I don’t actually know,” he said. He’d never really told anyone, he’d just been asked occasionally. He didn’t even know how it was common knowledge at Garreg Mach, unless one of the nobles in his house had decided to gossip about if after they’d heard about it at some dry social event. “People ask me. I tell them the truth.”

“You’re a lot braver than people give you credit for.” Sylvain sounded unusually sincere there, and Linhardt didn't quite know what to say, so he didn't say anything. The silence hung for a few moments, until Sylvain spoke again. “...Have you ever actually...kissed a boy?” 

“Yes,” he said. “I kissed Caspar once, a couple of years ago. I wouldn’t recommend it, he’s not a very good kisser. But no one since, and I’ve never actually kissed a woman. It’s all rather too much effort for me.”

“You’d rather read or nap, huh?” he asked.

“Exactly,” Linhardt replied, smiling at him. The returning smile from Sylvain looked slightly more genuine than he was used to.

“You’re like my exact opposite,” he said with a soft laugh. “I get in trouble for staying out too late, and kissing girls instead of doing my reading. Put the two of us together, and maybe you’d get one functional student out of us.” 

“I think you may actually be a more functional student than I am,” he said. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d sat through a full day of lessons without falling asleep at least once. He wasn’t cut out for this kind of education, but at this point it probably didn’t matter. Sylvain laughed again.

“Me, a better student than someone? Than you? I don’t think so. You’re genuinely interested in all this stuff. I’m...at least half the reason that I’m here is just to delay the inevitable fact of my father trying to marry me off. You...you could actually make something of your life with all of the research you do. You’re incredible, Linhardt.” 

Linhardt just about managed to hold in a splutter of embarrassment at those words. “I think you overestimate how useful my knowledge is,” he said. “Crests are only held by a tiny number of people in Fódlan. And I research all the unimportant things about it, like if appearance inheritance is separate from Crest inheritance, and an interesting side-project of mine is on personality. I was trying to work out if most nobles are insufferable because of their Crests or not, but people aren’t really willing to answer those questions, so-”

“I really hate Crests,” Sylvain admitted. “But you make them sound like the most interesting thing in the world. It’s a talent of yours.” 

“You’re being unusually nice to me tonight,” Linhardt said warily. “Is there something wrong?” 

“Nothing at all,” he said, far too quickly. For someone who spent a lot of time pretending to be someone he wasn’t, Sylvain was an absolutely terrible actor. “Actually, I might just be a bit tired. It’s getting pretty late, and I wouldn’t want to keep you from your longest nap of the day.”

“It’s called sleep, Sylvain,” he said, hoping he sounded fond. “If you want to go, I won’t stop you, but if you have something else you should say it.”

“Uhm…” Sylvain’s eyes met his own for a moment, then flicked away before Linhardt could really read what he was thinking. There was definitely something up, but the precise matter of what eluded him. “No, it’s okay. I’ll leave you be. See you soon, hey?” 

“Undoubtedly,” he said. He saw rather a lot of Sylvain now, after all. “Maybe, another time, we could meet in the gardens for tea.” It would be a shame not to share the gift, after all, when Sylvain had gone to the trouble of picking it out.

Sylvain turned away. “Maybe,” he said. No, then, he didn’t want to. Linhardt felt a twinge of something slightly unfamiliar in his stomach, but tried to ignore the feeling. It wasn’t like Sylvain was against seeing him ever again. It was just a rejected tea invitation. Unless he was reading into it, and ‘maybe’ really did mean ‘maybe’. He’d been reading into a lot of things that Sylvain said or did a lot more than he normally bothered to. 

“Well- have a good night,” Linhardt said, standing up and moving to open the door so that Sylvain could leave.

“Goodnight, Linhardt,” he said. He flashed another smile in his direction, this one far more guarded than the ones that came before. His gaze lingered for a moment, and Linhardt smiled in return.

Sylvain winked, tipped his hand in a sort of half wave, and headed out into the night. By the time Linhardt closed his door, he was already out of sight. Linhardt’s heart was beating far too fast for such a simple exchange. Sylvain winked all the time. At everyone. So why did he feel like he needed to sleep for a week to recover?

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed, please leave a comment because my bf (other half of this collab account) loves this and would be super happy to see others loving it too.


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